One Italian Summer(4)

Eric and I considered going for our honeymoon—taking the train down from Rome and hitting Capri—but we were young and saving for a house, and the whole thing felt too extravagant. We ended up finding a cheap flight to Hawaii and spending three nights at the Grand Wailea Maui.

I look at the tickets.

My mother had always talked about going back to Positano. First with my father, but then as time went on she began to suggest the two of us go together. She was adamant about it—she wanted to show me this place that had always lingered in her memory. This special mecca that she played in right before she became a woman and a wife and then a mother.

“It’s the most spectacular place in the world,” she’d tell me. “When I was there, we’d sleep until noon and then take the boat out onto the water. There was this great little restaurant, Chez Black, in the marina. We’d eat pasta and clams in the sand. I remember like it was yesterday.”

So we decided to go. First as a fantasy, then as a loose, down-the-road plan, and then, when she got sick, as a light at the end of the tunnel. “When I’m better” became “when we go to Positano.”

We booked the tickets. She ordered summer sweaters in creams and whites. Sun hats with big, wide brims. We planned and pretended right up until the end. Up until the week before she died we were still talking about the Italian sun. And now the trip is here, and she is not.

I edge my back so it’s flat against the side of her closet. A coat rubs up against my shoulder. I think about my husband and father downstairs. My mother was always better with them. She encouraged Eric to take the job at Disney, to ask for a raise, to buy the car he really wanted, to invest in the good suit. “The money will come,” she’d always say. “You’ll never regret the experience.”

My mother supported my father through the opening of his first clothing store. She believed that he could create his own label, and believed they could manufacture the product themselves. She was quality control. She could tell how good a spool of thread was just by looking at it, and she made sure every garment my dad had was up to her standards. She also worked as his desk girl, answering the phones and taking the orders. She hired and trained everyone who ever worked in their business, teaching them about an invisible stich, the difference between pleating and ruching. She planned the birthday parties and the baptisms of their employees and their children. She always baked on Fridays.

Carol knew how to show up.

And now here I am, hiding in her closet in her absence. How did I not inherit any of her capability? The only person who would know how to handle her death is gone.

I feel the paper crinkle between my fingers. I am gripping it.

I couldn’t. There’s no way. I have a job. And a grieving father. And a husband.

From downstairs I hear a clattering of pans. The loud sounds of unfamiliarity with appliances, cabinets, the choreography of the kitchen.

We are missing our center.

What I know: She is not in this house, where she died. She is not downstairs, in the kitchen she loved. She is not in the family room, folding the blankets and rehanging the wedding photos. She is not in the garden, gloves on, clipping the tomato vines. She is not in this closet that still smells like her.

She is not here, and therefore, I cannot be here, either.

Flight 363.

I want to see what she saw, what she loved before she loved me. I want to see where it was she always wanted to return, this magical place that showed up so strongly in her memories.

I curl my knees to my chest. I sink my head down into them. I feel the outline of something in my back pocket. I pull it out, and the cigarette, now warm and mangled, disintegrates in my hands.

Please, please, I say aloud, waiting for her, for this closet full of her clothes, to tell me what to do next.





Chapter Two


“Are you sure you don’t want me to take you?” Eric asks.

I’m standing in the entryway to our house, the one I have no idea if I’ll be returning to, with my suitcases at the door like an attentive child.

Eric is wearing a salmon-colored polo T-shirt and jeans, and his hair is still too long on the sides. I haven’t said anything about it, and neither has he. I wonder if he notices, if he realizes he needs a cut, too. I’ve made all those appointments for him. Suddenly his inability to get his hair cut feels hostile, an intentioned attack.

“No, Uber’s on the way.” I hold up my phone. “See, three minutes.”

Eric smiles, but it’s small, sad. “Okay.”

When I told Eric I wanted to go to Italy, to take the mother-daughter trip alone, he told me it was a great idea. He thought I needed a break—I’d been caring for my mother around the clock. Months earlier I’d taken a leave of absence from my job as an in-house copywriter for an ad agency in Santa Monica. I’d left when she first came home for treatment, and I didn’t know when I’d go back. Not that anyone had asked. At this point I’m not even sure the job will still be waiting for me.

“This will be good for you,” Eric said. “You’ll come back feeling so much better.”

We sat at our kitchen counter, a box of pizza between us. I hadn’t bothered to take out plates or utensils. All that was next to the box was a pile of napkins. We had given up caring.

“This is not a vacation,” I said.

I resented the idea that what was standing in the way of a new outlook on life was a few sun-soaked weeks on the Italian coast.